A Theology Of Apples And Visions

Let's get the obvious low-hanging fruit and cliches out of the way. 

Yes, my target for this theological lash is one that chose a bitten apple as a logo as if that wouldn't come back to haunt the company and their version of good and evil knowledge later.

Yes, the fanboys are as easy to mock as their obsessive and expensive foibles would suggest.

Yes, these are the kind of first-world problems that shame me to write about as there are more important things to write about.

Tasty. Glad for the snack of easy writing. Now on to the meat.

What seems to be the most troubling and marketable part of this product launch is the combination of VR with AR. What the Oculus and other headsets lacked. Apple intuitively picked up on and saw that it was pleasing to the eyes. Namely, the eyes that would be covered for augmentation in both directions this time. The user, like other headsets, gets a screen so close to their face their eyelashes could keep the lenses buffed. But the audience of the headset spectacle, otherwise known as normal people, now get to see a projected picture of the wearer's eye's to make the device more, human, I guess.

Like all virtual realities that borrow the terminology from fictional virtual realities, this one isn't virtual but is in fact real. No amount of AR takes the coffee table away so you don't hit it as much with your toe. Not nearly as much as the haptic feedback seems to add the reality in the icon you now get to pinch, in what Tim Cook is calling Spacial computing. But the clinch to that pinch is that it isn't spacial. The icons aren't floating around your house they are made to look like they are. So they can ease their way into your version and source of normal. Unlike the Matrix movies, Where people's entire minds and souls are uploaded into the virtual reality of the computer, the reality here is still real and the computing is still happening in computers. Not in living rooms but on faces. We're just making it look that way because, like Eve, we want to know something. In this case, not the difference between right and wrong, but between cool and uncool. Because that is what all Apple products are. They are for cool kids, not obedient children. 

This gadget is harmless in these quirky features in and of itself. What will be the theological problems it ushers in, are what I'm more concerned about. Problems like what it means to be incarnational or to touch things. Because there are plenty of things we are and aren't supposed to touch or be touched by as Christians, and this little piece of overpriced tech will blur those lines. 

When the pastor insists that he is laying hands on you in prayer, because your computer generates an avatar, and his avatar can haptically feedback between each of your two servers. Then the same pastor then has the means necessary to insist he wasn't cheating on his wife with that avatar as well. You see the porn star wasn't actually on the black leather loveseat in his office. Her avatar was spacially computed there and he was actually just by himself, sinning alone. When the virtual baptism is called into question by the previously wet and the ChatGPT sermon preached by the A.I. appropriation of the pastor's face over the Facetime app is not paid for, because it wasn't actually him it was just enough of him for us to ask if it might have been the Ox who's due his grain sans muzzle.

There is nothing in the church that this device fixes that haven't also been broken by this device. Its solution to the obscuring of the user's eyes to the public is not fixed by the projection of fake eyes on the screen across them. This is a compromise. Along with much of what it offers as features. It is not a solution to workplace clutter to have a headset on instead of a functional workstation. Putting monitors on your corneas does not free you from your desk, it chains you to your job description. Oh, You think you'll just take off the headset? Like you put down the iPhone or stand in line for days to get one of the first releases in store? Stores I might add are being redesigned so that up to 40% of the floor space is dedicated to demonstration of the tech. 

Yes, now you can walk through the holy land on a tour marketed to Christians by people who know Christians are a market now. And you can do it without walking or a holy land for that matter, just pixels and true depth cameras to give you an equivalency. I'm sure the ever-increasing graphics won't ever be used to change where virtual things are in relation to real things. What happens when the temple mount is slowly edited out of the VR holy land tours your church uses and no one actually knows that it used to be there. 

A virtual-only world would be rife with the ability to edit what can be lived in that world. So the binding of that virtual world to the real world should be held in the suspicion of such editing. That is what Apple is doing differently here compared to other VR headsets. Apple is not trying to give you a virtual world to explore, knowing that those worlds would be fake to the same degree that they are real. It's exploring the virtualization of the world God made. The questioning of what God said in real life, and what it actually means. 

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:1-5 English Standard Version

Apple is not giving you forbidden fruit to eat with this headset. It's making sure you stay on your high-fructose diet. By blending anything that it can with the reality of the situation and a general crop of technological and theological ignorance. The church has a unique opportunity in the face of this new tech to be the kind of reality that Eve needed when a snake was near. One that rightly defines things by what God says they are not by what god's creations say they are. A real place where a multi-trillion dollar company that peddles overpriced addiction in white is noticeably absent.

The church bell can't be censored by a moderator.

Nor the steeple be pixelated for the performance of those who view it.

And the Christian cannot be made of the world and also be not of it.

Boniface.exe _AXE is "getting rusty": true

You'll have to forgive my Luddite attempt at a  C++ joke in the title. It was a swing of an axe too heavy for me to lift. One that is often thrust into the hands of coal miners and truckers, as their jobs are deleted via ideological progress. The ever inflammatory, "learn to code" is simply not going to just happen. But then again, neither seems to be this technological reformation we've developed a whole set of terms for.

Terms like Gutenberg Revolution.

This phrase has been applied to a lot of things since the actual Gutenberg revolution in information technologies. The actual Gutenberg did what wasn't being done to the detriment of the lack of it being done. The church had itself in a bind and was being run by perverse and heretical people. So alongside theological heavy lifters, Gutenberg took what he had made and paired it with the truth in a meaningful way. But what he didn't do was use his technology because of the technology's inherent value. Or perhaps better put. The Gutenberg press did not make the reformation happen it joined with it. That was the revolutionary act. Not the man-centred and initiated action but a technological and faithful response to the gospel already actioning.

The same people who printed Bibles would have hand wrote them if it was needed. But used the printing press because they were as available to them as they were to it. 

This is very different than the myriad of false Gutenberg revolutions the church has suggested we have been in and are in the middle of. Because unlike the first one, we don't have the will and means to revolution. We have the will and account-based access to the means. Gutenberg had total control over the mundane magic of being able to use his printing press to print Bibles. In a similar way that his hands would have done the writing if it was needed. 

We don't have that kind of control over our social media. Or A.I. Or any VR space or whatever comes at us next technologically. What we do have is truth. But what we don't have is control over what we do with that truth. Posting what the bible actually says about any number of socially controversial topics patently shows this. Because those posts will be made to not show that, by the hands at the actual helm. Yet, our jean jacket and airpod festooned pastorate will state on these platforms and about these technologies, that we are definitely in control of this ship. Despite the evidence and icebergs to the contrary. 

None of these bright, and shiny, and rainbow clad in June technologies and services is the next printing press. But they are doing a great job of convincing everyone that they are the next printing press. What we need to be doing is a good job of using the technology we have control of as we bring the truth of the gospel. Because what we are doing isn't working the way we claim it will when we claim the title and terminology of Gutenberg Revolution. 

There isn't a statistically relevant person with a smartphone and the internet that doesn't know who Joe Rogan is. But there are a number of people in a relevant statistic that don't know who Jesus is as their personal Lord and Saviour, on any given Social media and through the internet. That could be because bro-science talks on elk meat and DMT, alongside political centrism and talk of ancient Egyptian aliens, may be a different kind of truth than the gospel. But it at the very least begs the validity of our use of actual transformative technologies to label what we play video games on and how we scroll. Another great example of this misalignment, is that there isn't a person out there using the internet, in most forms, that doesn't also know that the internet is where porn is found. 

But for the moment let's assume that this era we live in is home to the next big thing, and we do need to reconfigure our churches and strategies to benefit the most from the technology of the age. It's a big enough assumption to go without criticism so I'll limit my criticism to stuff I've already mentioned before. If social media is the next big thing for evangelism or discipleship, then why are we only going where we are already? Finding Christians who also like to watch TikTok's isn't the same kind of thing as writing Bibles that used to only be made by hand by the catholic church. But if we claim it is of equal or comparative value to do such, Then why are we preaching our social media gospel where there are already Christians? Paul didn't.

"by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ; and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.”

Romans 15:19-21 English Standard Version

There's a social media site out there that knows you don't think of it like you do Instagram and Facebook. One that is in desperate need of the gospel for its unbelievers and reformation for the backslidden believers who keep showing up as well. One that is as unapproachable as the temple prostitutes of Corinth were to Paul, where he wrote the letter to the Romans, and one where anyone can make an account and use the technology of the day to do their worshiping. You know which one I'm talking about without being on it because of the same kinds of comparison used to call TikTok akin to the printing press. I'm not saying this kind of thing doesn't work. I'm saying what we're doing isn't lining up with what would work.

St. Boniface found himself in a similar position but with fewer distracting apps on his phone. Tasked with bringing the gospel to an 8th-century German audience. But a particular tree stood in his way as the place where everyone actually gathered because they had no online spaces to conflate. Boniface could have taken the approach we are fond of, one with social media, and began planting Christ Trees to sway the Germans to a more and better fruit from the Spirit. He instead took an axe and exercised his dominion over the plants, given to humanity for their bodily food and turned it into a pulpit from which food for the soul would come.

Maybe, just maybe we need to apply what we argue for, on behalf of our social media churches, and take an axe to another social "Hub" where there is more than enough sin and sinners to warrant the presence of the Saviour's gospel. But what that will require is a Boniface Resolve, in lieu of a Gutenberg Revolution. 

If anyone needs me. I'll be sharpening my axe for the Germans. 

Take it away there, Johnny.

"And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."

Matthew 3:9-11 English Standard Version

The Naughty Bits Of Social Media, And How We Use Greek Words.

There is a reason we call the girl who is loud, and wears tight clothing, and is overly inquisitive, and suggestively opinionated, and all those things combined, an attention whore. It has nothing to do with her sexual activity, though, it is tangentially related to it. And also, a reason why that character I have just produced in your mind does not have to be a She to be an attention whore. Plenty of dudes filling that role too. Because what whores do, and what people who visit whores do is a matched set with the concepts of attention and how you give and get it. It's a currency. And how we spend it matters. So I'm going to propose something for parents and pastors alike right now, that will seem out of place. That Porn and Social Media are one and the same, or at least the same kind of thing. But seeing how Social Media and Porn are essentially the same kinds of thing, requires that we know what at least one of these things is to make the comparison.

You see, it's not that there's porn on social media, it's that porn is social media. Social Media is just the kind of porn with no nudity. 

And the reason that concept seems strange to you, is because you likely don't get your definition of what porn is from the Bible. You get it from the film ratings and the motion picture association. From what you were and weren't allowed to watch as a kid but not the reasons why you were or weren't allowed. 

We get the word Pornography from two Greek words 

Pornos: Strongs 4205

A debauchee, libertine, fornicator, or whoremonger.

Grapho: Strongs 1125

To grave, write, or describe.

I'm by no means a Greek scholar but you don't need to be to see how this word works and to then infer how similar workings need to be put into words today.

Slap the two of them together and you get what is essentially the writings of the debauched, the descriptions of fornicators, and the graven images of whores. Sound familiar? It should. This is a no-nonsense labelling of the multi-billion dollar porn industry. They make money by the commodification of fornication, adultery, and whoremongering. They turn these illicit sexual activities into a product that can be bought sold and advertised for. They do this by taking in person and real-life events and capturing enough of their essence and appeal through different forms of media. They do so for money and attention. They need one to fuel the other in that dichotomy. In this case, predominantly male attention and money for commodified females.

What's important to know though is they, the porn industry, started this commodification before the advent of social media as we know it. In crude terms. Porn stars were giving us pictures of what they would put in their mouths, well before Instagram gave influencers a place to post their brunch pics. But the reason that the influencer and the star do both actions is the same. The commodification of an activity or experience, hinged on the gathering of satisfaction from an audience. 

Pornography, was the first social media, by any and every definition we try to apply to the fully clothed version owned by Zuck's and Musk. They were the first selfies on the web and the first places where user-generated content ended up. That TikTok and Instagram do it with clothes on is beside the point of social media as a concept. Turns out the Mennonites were wrong and dancing didn't lead to worse things, it was the other way around, at least Tiktok.

The commodification of an activity or experience. That's the "pornos" part of this bait and switch that most people don't see because they don't take their understanding from the Bible they take it from everywhere but the Bible. Speaking of... 

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," 

Romans 3:23 English Standard Version

"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." 

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 English Standard Version

What these four verses show us, from hundreds of verses that could illustrate the point, is that there are no morally good or neutral people creating social media accounts, running social media sites, or moderating social media content. There are sinners that know Jesus and sinners that don't. And a smattering of both that know where the word pornography comes from or tragically do not. People who have since day one of their use of the internet, let pornography on the internet, dictate what being a fornicator or a debauchee or whoremonger might look like. Instead of taking anything the world might hand over to them on the plate of convenience and speed and comparing it to a word more true than anything graven so far. You don't have good people on Twitter alongside bad people. You have bad people alongside bad people who are covered in the blood of Jesus, on Twitter.

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

2 Timothy 3:16-17 English Standard Version

You've likely heard it a couple hundred times by now. A pastor is about to make his first point of a sermon after the opening joke or story. What does he quote to define his subject? Websters? Google? Wall street journal statistics? Whatever version of ChatGPT we're on? What's happening here is a strange form of persuasion steeped in everything but the word of God that's supposed to be preached. And it's indicative of a generation that doesn't take that word of God as seriously as it could for the aforementioned sake of convenience or speed.

For parents teetering on the philosophical fence of what to allow their teenager or pre-teenager to do on their phone, or if they should have a phone at all, they hit an all too often wall of specificity in the scriptures. Where the word of God doesn't speak about smartphones or social media on smart phones. So how and I or any other parent supposed to know what God really wants for a child's life in this regard. 

They're not wrong and not alone, but they are also not reading their Bibles enough, maybe in frequency, but not in understanding.

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun."

Ecclesiastes 1:9 English Standard Version

No, the Bible doesn't speak directly and specifically to how your teenage son is going to find pictures of barely still teenage girls on his phone, through his Twitter account. But it does speak very plainly about what teenage boys should be thinking about, who they should be avoiding, and what the actions of immoral people are in explicit detail. Our blindspot de jour is one of thinking that Bible verses that speak about sexually immoral people aren't also talking about immoral people in general because there's sex involved. And is the same mental gymnast accident that sends us off that horse and into the hard ground of reality. 

There is no sin simplistically in having a Twitter account but there's also no sin simplistically in recording yourself masturbating in video format. Sin enters the picture when the two of those mediums meet for an exchange of media. Then the message is clear. That media is attention and what we give it to in excess and for sin. Because you can find all kinds of things labelled as porn that wouldn't make your network admin at work batt and eyelid. Garden Porn, Car Porn, Gun Porn. everything and anything ramped up in aesthetic value with 0% sexual content. Hell, I'm waiting for the Theology Porn trend to hit Tiktok given the current state of the slippery slope. All this so that you can find exactly the kind of car of your dreams driving the exact road you want to see it drive. Interchange any hobby, interest or collectable and repeat ad absurdum, and what you have is every discovery algorithm out there being sold to you as social media, instead of just porn. Then again both are free and give you exactly what you want when you want it. Maybe there isn't any selling going on, just exchanges for attention. What we're missing is that in that kind of environment, it might not matter what is being displayed for consumption it might matter that it's being displayed for consumption.

Because consumption and communication are two different things, and porn is not a medium of communication, it's the media of sexual consumption.

"In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." 

Proverbs 3:6 English Standard Version

And.

“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes."

Deuteronomy 11:18 English Standard Version

The Christian way to interact with and use social media isn't limited to the posting of certain things and the avoidance of posts of other certain things. It's in the assessment of any part of our lives from a perspective blinded by the word of God. Like it were a phylactery between our eyes obscuring the vision that would be used to tempt us otherwise. It's a biblical reproof and correction of the sinful people that make social media work and the sinful people that use it as well. When we stop to take that kind of biblical look on the platforms that are consuming more and more of the everyman's day, in near mindless algorithmic streaming and scrolling, we can see that, yes, there is potential for the gospel to be communicated here but, no, that isn't what these places were designed for. They were designed as traps for the human mind and work great at that. But can be used to trap those same minds in a cage with the gospel. 

Having a bear trap that you intend to use and having a bear trap used on you with intent, use almost all the same words and motivations but both shake out in very different ways for the guy in theological flip-flops. And this is why in the decade or more that social media has been out the gospel still hasn't gone viral like you'd think the life-changing power of it would. Not that it couldn't but it would require that same gospel to be preached on something that might be inherently broken or even antithetical to it. Ask yourself, how many people with a smartphone know what the baby shark song is, or any number of dance/meme trends on Tiktok, or who Pewdiepie is. How many of those same people have heard or could have heard about Jesus via that phone and those social media apps. Everyone knows who Joe Rogan is, Maybe we just need Jesus to come back and sit down with him and Dr. Jordan Peterson. 

Why isn't this working the way it is for the pop culture of the day? 

Because our God doesn't just use anything because it works. Asherah poles and high places worked great for worship services throughout the scriptures, but they were still torn down for a reason. And this isn't me saying that I'm not for a good Boniface option now and then. But our adoption of any given social media platform for daily use and ministry, and the chopping down of Donar's Oak to build a church, are again, two very different things in the shakedown even sans bear traps. 

Christian-flavoured paganism won't get the kind of outpouring of the Spirit needed for a revival in our times. Because of how the sacrifices of praise are shared and filtered. But it will look like it works because it needs to traffic the attention of anyone who gives it to exist in the first place. Social media doesn't care that the gospel isn't going viral on its platforms. It cares that Christians don't care that the gospel hasn't gone viral on its platform. Because if there was ever a demographic that was easy to sell to, it was the kind of crowd that is based on unending tolerance, forgiveness, and grace. That kind of person never returns what they've paid for. It defeats the whole purpose of being works-based. Which is why we need to care about how we use it. 

In short, we need a theology of the internet. If only someone was writing a book about it without the assumption of its necessity.